Data security is more crucial than ever, especially in light of recent significant data breaches that affected many large firms. According to a recent study by Insight and IDG Research, 78% of businesses lack trust in their IT security posture and think it needs to be improved.
Data breaches can cost organizations significantly. They can not only damage the firm financially but also harm its reputation. Businesses, especially large organizations, must be vigilant and ensure that the data belonging to their business is safely stored. Establishing basic data security best practices is essential to protect sensitive data and ensure clients’ private information is safe.
Tips to Ensure Data Security and Integrity
Form Security Plans and Clarify Data Policies
A data security plan which identifies the policies needed to protect the organizational data and information is crucial. Decide what information is gathered and for what purposes, where and how it is used, how long it is kept, who has access to it, and how it is disposed of. Identifying the legal and organizational policies for data access, use, and protection makes it easier to manage and keep the data secure. Your business should have clearly defined policies in your plan about how employees may use personal technology. The policies might need to be updated or modified as the company operations upgrade, or data arrival is significant. Nonetheless, policies minimize confusion about what happens to data within your firm. The data that doesn’t comply with the policies should be either discarded or evaluated again.
Identify and Categorize Sensitive Data
Although all the data you acquire needs to be protected, you must specify the sensitive information and categorize it accordingly. The security team should examine and report on the data repositories, which they can later classify according to the significance of the company operations. As new information is received, this data can be modified and classified accordingly. You must form rules for data access and retrieval to ensure the upgrade or downgrade of data classification is in the hands of privileged users. Create a policy that specifies the different types of access, classification-based criteria for access, who has access to the data, and what constitutes proper data use.Backup Data Regularly to Prevent Data Losses
Data losses can cost businesses a lot. The company must have a security policy that contains backups to prevent any data from getting lost or corrupted. Backups assist you in restoring the systems as quickly as possible, minimizing the risks of data breaches. Regardless of any risks involved or not, backups should regularly take place within your systems. A backup log is necessary, including information on what data is being backed up, where it is saved and how frequently the process is carried out. The best way to back up data is using Cloud, which systematically guarantees information’s safe and secure upkeep.Use Data Encryption Approaches
The sensitive data whose security is critical to the organization must be encrypted to provide an extra layer of protection. Organizations employing efficient encryption techniques to safeguard consumer data may result in legal action and penalties. According to a recent study, 98% of Internet of Things (IoT) data are unencrypted. The realization doesn’t happen until the company faces a serious data breach due to no encryption policies. Encrypting the stored data becomes much more important if an intruder manages to get past your perimeter protections, no matter how robust they may be. If the data are impossible to read, even if stolen, they are useless.Protect Data over the Network
Business operations involving sensitive data often take place over the network. Thus, network security is also an important aspect of data security to ensure that data is transmitted securely. The task is to protect the information on the company’s servers, personal computers and other devices so that no breaches occur. A firewall is software protection aiming to safeguard your network by filtering traffic and preventing unauthorized access from outsiders to the data. The systems should run an antivirus regularly to scrutinize threats and system dysfunctionalities. An effective plan should be ready for action in case any threat arises. Data security is much concerned with network security as all businesses nowadays keep their information on remote servers or third-party storage.
